Puffio

Here's something really rather fantastic if you have fond memories of music and popular culture in Australia in the psychadelic 1960s. 'Tomorrow Is Today: Australia In The Psychedelic Era, 1966-70' is a quite wonderful book, packed with information and snippets and bits and pieces. It really has been exhaustively researched, providing a definitive guide to the music, fashion and politics of the era as well as chapters on The Wild Cherries, Wendy Saddington, Spectrum, The Loved Ones, Daddy Cool, Go Set magazine, The Easybeats, The Twilights, Normie Rowe (pictured) and much, much more. To coincide with the release of the book through Wakefield Press there's a couple of gigs to note. On Sat 9 Dec Adelaide's Mod-psych masters The Green Circles and Melbourne's wild garage rockers Thee Stag Knights will launch 'Tomorrow Is Today' at The Grace Emily. Entry is free. The following day, on Sun 10 Dec from 4pm at The Grace Emily there will be a screening of rare Australian music films including the lost TV pilot of 'Once Upon A Twilight' (The Twilights), Nigel Buesst's 'Gerry Humphreys: Loved One' (The Loved Ones), Peter Lamb's 'Approximately Panther' (Loved Ones, Bobby and Laurie and more) and Chris Lofven's 'Part One: 806' and Part Two: 'The Beginning' (Daddy Cool, Spectrum, Hans Poulsen, Cam-Pact and more). Entry is by a gold coin donation.

Jive nightclub on Hindley St is the place to be for a huge exhibition of talented visual artists including Anna Goodhind, Bobby Harris, Tegan Hale, Rachel Will, Ed Comey, Cally Sharp, Sally Kitten, Angela Facchini, Tini Aziz, Patricia Wozniak, Tess Gergahty & Tam Baillie. The exhibition will be launched in aid of Amnesty Internationals Candle Day on Wed 6 Dec with performances by musicians John Woods & Tim Bennet, Tristan Lout-Robins and Kate Ward on the night, and will be open for viewing from Wed to Fri between 4pm and 7pm.

Second and third year acting students from Flinders Drama Centre, perform Sam Shepard's black farce 'The God Of Hell', directed by Corey McMahon on Tues 12 to Thurs 14 Dec at the Matthew Flinders Theatre, at Flinders Uni. 'The God Of Hell' rolls a nuclear nightmare into a disturbing picture of our world post 9/11. Drawing on America's obsession with conspiracy theories, people being abducted by aliens and men in dark suits, Shepard creates a world that acts as a metaphor for America in the 21st century.

It's that time of the year again... Moonlight Cinema has moved into the Botanic Gardens, which means most summer evenings from now until Sun 18 Feb 2007 you can thrill to an eclectic programme of great cinema. Actually, sometimes it's not so great cinema (viz their screening 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off'), but there's always something on the programme to tempt, from the latest cinema releases to golden oldies. Oh, and the occasional chestnut. Last week a friend of Puffio sidled up and said - slyly - "How many times do you need to see 'Top Gun'?'. The answer, of course, from a non homo-erotic point of view, is answered by the question 'How many times do you want to sing along to You've Lost That Loving Feeling in your lifetime?'. Also on the bill are films such as 'Breakfast At Tiffany's', the new 'Casino Royale', 'A Scanner Darkly' and 'An Inconvenient Truth', amongst many others. What's not good about that?

The Australian Classical Youth Ballet's production of 'Mary Poppins' has been included as part of the Festival Centre's Christmas Concert series, for two performances only at the Festival Theatre on Fri 22 and Sat 23 Dec. Inspired by the central character in a series of children's books written by PL Travers, the Australian Classical Youth Ballet's production of 'Mary Poppins' promises to delight the entire family with live narration by Brenton Whittle and his offsider, Bobby The Galah. Do note the Fri performance begins at 7pm, whilst on Sat it's a 2pm matinee.

'Take Flight', the Visual Communication Graduate Exhibition at the South Australian School of Art is open from Fri 8 until Tues 12 Dec in the SASA Gallery, Kaurna Building, on the corner of Hindley St and Fenn Pl.

The inaugural 'Silent re Masters' program continues apace at the Mercury Cinema, delivering four new music scores by four different Adelaide composers, musicians and bands set to screenings of four classic silent films. On Thurs 7 Dec Charlie Chaplin's ' The Gold Rush' (G 1925) screens. The screening will be complemented with a new score by Russian born composer, lyricist, singer and sound designer Anna Buntounikova, who arrived in Adelaide from Russia in 2004. On Mon 11 Dec the rarely seen Fritz Lang 1928 spy thriller 'Spione (Spies) rated R screens with a new score by performed by Mr Wednesday (Duncan Campbell); and on Tues 12 Dec Rolf de Heer will discuss creating a silent film in a contemporary context and will show excerpts from his new film 'Dr. Plonk' - an experiment in silent film for the 21st century. This is a world first opportunity to see exclusive excerpts of this work in progress. A screening of Segei Eisenstein's unfinished masterpiece 'Que Viva Mexico' (1955) rated R, on Thurs 14 December brings the Silent re Masters program to a close. Composer Marco Cher-Gibard will create a Mexican dub inspired by the most detailed assembly of this film that will pay tribute to Eisenstein's twenty year battle to complete this film... a battle he ultimately lost.